Serenity Now

It's been a spectacularly stressful couple of weeks around here. I've alluded to our new house over the last six months... it's been quite a project, more or less a complete rehab of an 1831 farmhouse, and there's still a good ways to go before it's "finished". We've run into the predictable cost and schedule overruns that can plague any large-scale home project, and have been increasingly in a state of limbo as we start to pack and distance ourselves from the house we've called home for the last five years.

Early last week we had a bit of stress relief when our landlord offered to let us go month to month on our lease, which was up at the end of this month. "Great!" we thought, "that gives us a few extra weeks to get the house into a habitable state, and plenty of time to pack and haul our junk over there!" We took them up on their verbal offer for the month of July, and promptly sent them another months' rent.

Two days ago our landlord reneged on their offer and told us to hit the bricks by July 1, leaving us with 5 days to pack AND move AND clean, instead of the 5 weeks we thought we had. If they hadn't offered to let us stay in the first place, we would have been much more industrious over the last week and a half, but as it was we thought we had some breathing room.

So, after allowing myself to freak out for an hour or so, I had a choice: let my anger and frustration over the situation stress me out even further, or get my shit together and adapt to the "new normal". I chose number two. Don't get me wrong, I am about as stressed out as I've been since the last time we moved 6 years ago, but I'm not going to compound it with anger at the landlord right now.